A week-long all-nighter of preparations for a show that will run for only a week.

and it opens with a bang and some shots of lambanog

One of the works is an interactive piece by Poklong Anading where he enjoins participants to submit their 15-second video explaining their unrealized project and uploading it on the Instagram page of #AVoidWork

shirts were also sold with a QR code that one can scan and direct them to the Instagram page of the project. The shirts are produced and distributed by Limitado shirts.

another interactive piece by Mannet Villariba riffing on Tad Ermitanio’s Hulikotekan work. Viewers can make their own music by producing sounds from objects on the table. A computer program records and manipulates the produced video and audio from such.

Excerpts from the video piece by Ivan and Pauline Despi where they have deconstructed the process by which they have made their collaborative video piece Babel. Audio is from Ivan’s instructions for the performers of the video.

and for the soundtrack of the night – Modified Signals

First to perform were Richard Tuason and Roger Lopez who was joined later on by Caliph8.

The 2nd leg in the series of Pablo Galleries’ 10th Anniversary show will showcase video works by Poklong Anading, Martha Atienza, Lena Cobangbang, Ivan & Pauline Despi, Kaloy Olavides, Tad Ermitanio with Mannet Villariba. Curated by Shireen Seno and Merv Espina, the exhibit, entitled Instructions, retakes the 2-part process of video work : the production and conceptualization of the work, and the installation of the work in a given space,” inviting artists to revisit their past video or time-based media works and break them down to a score or set of instructions—distilling old work into a set of instructions from which to generate something new. ”

Quoting further from their curatorial statement :

“In the context of PABLO’s video exhibition on the occasion of their 10th anniversary, the artists can choose to present their actual processes and investigations, or work them in as they then re-install, re-imagine or re-work their pieces into a given space—this time with a heightened awareness of the limitations of space, time, technology, finances and other logistical constraints—based on the original incarnation or idea of their works and the act of breaking them down.

We liken this process to a performance. Such as in music or dance, an element of indeterminacy is central to the idea of a work being performed. But indeterminacy is not present in the playback of media. It’s present in the act of installing an installation.

In the process of participating in this exhibition, the artists assess their ideas and intentions of creation, and explore alternative ways of understanding authenticity, change and loss in ways that might help guide the conservation of their works of art. ”

“Many of the works in question only exist as memories, rumors, and text on forgotten catalogs and manuscripts, even those as recent as 5 years ago. Perhaps the moving image can in fact bear witness to the instability/precarity of our times, challenging the very structures and dynamics that constitute these works with its audience, whose various acts of witnessing, participation and remembrance is key—and for some works, could now only be its only form of existence.”

Shireen Seno and Merv Espina continue to work on the Kalampag Tracking Agency, an ongoing initiative and screening program exploring alternative notions/visions in moving image practice from the Philippines.

This will open on August 15 and will run until August 22, 2015. The opening night will be highlighted by a special Selecter FM Session, curated by Caliph8 with performances by Pow Martinez & Kaloy Olavides (with Pastilan Dong), Malek Lopez & Moon Fear Moon, Roger Lopez & Richard Tuason.

Never mind Mercury retrogading this schizo-weather week, cause Selecter FM session is back ! This time time with independent curator Merv Espina who played rare recordings of pop and dance tunes from the golden era of the late 50s to the 70s from Armenia, Cambodia, Republic of Malay, Cameroon, Thailand, India, Rhodesia, Upper Volta, etc.

The film that seized the night – the epic film adaptation of one chapter from the Indian epic Mahabharata, this focused mostly on Hanuman the Monkey king.

The Selecter FM session was highlighted by the launch of the Forces At Work catalog, exhibition held at Jorge Vargas Museum in conjunction with The Japan Foundation Manila.

Travel and art guide books produced by Japan Foundation were also exclusively released that night.

A school supplies donation drive for the children of full time workers of Kadamay, as well fundraising shirt sale for Lon Caacbay of The Axel Pinpin Propaganda Machine, who recently passed on was also set-up.

and Andrew Leavold, the Aussie Filipino cinephile behind the docu about pint-sized action star Weng Weng in The Search for Weng Weng. He’s currently busy in production for another film docu about Filipina actresses who starred in bold films.

This will coincide with the launch of Saturnino Basilia‘s latest zine Before Us, Nothing Existed Here by Allan Balisi. Produced in editions of 60, the zine is a compilation of drawings derived from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film, Alphaville. The text is lifted from the film’s dialogue, specifically from 32:20 to 35:39, and used as a basis and accompanying text for Allan’s 26 drawings.

On September 13, Jed Escueta will be opening his solo exhibit Coprolite Happens, a sort of accounting/inventory of the photos he has taken over the past years since he started exhibiting and diaristically taking photos since 1999.

His method of taking stock from his personal archive are not chronologically categorized or filed but presented with an introspective distance, yet they’re all linked by a sentient narrative of lives glimpsed in a flash and memories affixed as fossils on paper, purged as image projections, what were once conceived of light are purged back to light, a selection from more than a thousand that he has pooled from negatives, prints and digital files.